The subfolder solution has worked for us for a long time. Search engine submissions were made separately for the index pages in various languages to main engines in various countries/languages. The main index page is English. Header and footer include files are images (separate for each language) with links to choose the language of choice. Once your in that language all internal links go to the language version of the desired page. No need for cookies. Use only native speakers to translate your pages. Non natives never get it quite right and computer translation will come out bad (at best). Problem is, you can't know the default language encoding of the visitor's browser. Therefore, the only solution we found was to make the header with the language links an image (with image map) so the language name shows up in it's own script for all viewers. So the English pages have a header (English include file) like: About Us Members Area Espanol Deutch etc. Spanish page would contain: Acerca Para Miembros English etc... All images so everybody sees the same thing. --- Jan Brasna <discuss at alphanumeric.cz> wrote: > Our multilingual web sites have structure like > > http://www.example.com/en/ > http://www.example.com/en/about-us/ > http://www.example.com/en/about-us/contact/ > > http://www.example.com/es/ > http://www.example.com/es/sobre-nosotros/ > http://www.example.com/es/sobre-nosotros/contacto/ > > http://www.example.com/cz/ > http://www.example.com/cz/o-nas/ > http://www.example.com/cz/o-nas/kontakt/ > > etc. > > or sometimes *.com/pt/* or *.com/fr/* and similar > can be replaced by > entire regional domains (*.pt and *.fr) instead of > the "language > folders" on one server/domain. > > If someone enters the root > (http://www.example.com/), she is redirected > by RFC negotiation[2] (beware of issues[3]) to > appropriate "language > folder" by their Accept-Language HTTP header[1]. > > [1] > http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.4 > [2] > http://pear.php.net/package/HTTP/docs/latest/HTTP/HTTP.html#methodnegotiateLanguage > [3] > http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/www/lang-neg.html > > -- > Jan Brasna aka JohnyB :: www.alphanumeric.cz | > www.janbrasna.com > -- > > * * Please support the community that supports you. > * * > http://evolt.org/help_support_evolt/ > > For unsubscribe and other options, including the Tip > Harvester > and archives of thelist go to: > http://lists.evolt.org > Workers of the Web, evolt ! > __________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page! http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs